…

…

I’ve not felt particularly… verbose… lately. Hence the lack of updates.

School is back in and things at work are extremely hectic. Thursday we go to sign our closing paperwork and we will soon be handing our house over to someone else willing to shoulder a mortgage.

Today I gave into a flight of fancy and took half day off and surprised Cheryl. I brought donuts and Tim Hortons coffee and tea to her. She and Emma were very pleased to see me.

We spent the afternoon window shopping and getting estimates on privacy fencing for Dad’s house, plus running a thousand other errands we wouldn’t normally have time for. Wow. Who knew vinyl and plastic cost so much when you want 140 feet of it six feet high and spanning your backyard?

Anywho… life is full of excitement right now. Unfortunately I lack adequate words to capture everything that is going on.

I’ll have to decompress later.

Geek Watch 2004 Day Eleven

So, I get to make the mammoth trek back to Canada on Saturday to fetch my wife and daughter, thus ending my roughly two week stint of bachelorhood. It’s been nice, but I’ve felt pretty empty seeing as they haven’t been with me. I usually tend not to sleep too well when they are out of the house so I’ve had a few late nights either surfing, writing, chatting or video gaming.

I bought a copy of Splinter Cell for the PS2 just over a week ago, and I have only seen the title screen. I haven’t actually started the training missions. The same goes for Dawn of War, and Tribes: Vengeance. I’ve barely been able to give any of them any time.

*sigh*

Oh well. At least I get some real tea this weekend.

Geek Watch 2004 Day Six

And now for Chris’ feelings regarding Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Let’s put it this way. This is the first time I’ve ever wanted to tip for watching a movie. I paid six bucks for my ticket and I felt like I needed to go back out to the service desk, give them a twenty, then tell them to keep the change.

It wasn’t just a film, as much as it was a work of art. It was a fabulous homage to the 1940’s vision of action, adventure, and sci-fi rolled into one beautifully rendered and executed package.

I’ve read some reviews that said it was all glitz and sets a new high-watermark for computer generated imagery. That it did. But all that was to set the tone for atmosphere (which it has in spades). It also harkened back to the old days of radio serials and the original Rocketeer. I dig that kind of stuff, and my Dad would have loved it.

This film is definitely going into my DVD collection when it’s released.

Geek Watch 2004 Day Five

I was up until 1:30 this morning finishing up the Firefly DVDs that I borrowed from Keith.

What a phenomenal show. The story arcs taking place and deep character development and amazing dialogue and the total package where just phenomenal.

It’s a shame the show got cut down after nine episodes. Fan support for it has been so strong that the DVD set was released, and Joss Whedon (the creator) has managed to take it and make a feature film known as Serenity (after their starship) for the big screen. Now I’m all hyped up for that.

This guy was able to take two seemingly disparate genres (Westerns and Sci-fi), and meld them together brilliantly, cohesively, and in a way that makes complete sense.

Utterly amazing.

---

It’s no secret that I moonlight as "the local computer guy" on a semi-regular basis. Wednesday night I had the opportunity to go over and work on a neighbor’s computer. Let’s just say that this person is your stereotypical in-house computer support nightmare.

You walk into the house and the odor of cat hits you. Then you make your way to the spare bedroom/office where you find the greasy, old, crusty, smoke ridden computer that serves two purposes:

1.) E-Mail
2.) Playing Poker Online

So.

Let’s begin with setting up the scene shall we?

This computer is a K-Mart Blue Light.com special. Running Windows 98 and has 32MB of (barely) functional RAM. Maybe, maybe I say, a 1Ghz processor. Runs slow as dirt. Achingly slow. There’s deeply entrenched spyware and adware that even SpyBot and AdAware can’t remove. The most I can do for it at any given time is run a disk defrag on it and dump the temporary Internet files in Internet Exploder.

The root problem my customer was experiencing was that she couldn’t get on the button that let her play Pogo. Oh, and she couldn’t get on to Outlook to find reply no more.

*sigh*

So, it’s roughly 7PM and I sit down in front of this computer for the second time. The first time was 78 days ago (based on the last time the disk defragmenter was run). That’s July 1 for those of you frowning, scratching your heads and trying to think what day that might have been.

So I sit down and get to work. I try doing simple tasks like going out online and hitting a web site like CNN or USAToday or eBay. Nothing. Locked up.

Blue Screen of Death! Yay!

*ergh*

So, I reboot into safe mode and start running the defrag routine. This goes on for about twenty minutes while she regales me of stories related to her favorite casinos, her daughter (she’s gay you know), and how her beer helps her feet feel better. Oh and she wanted me to touch her hand that was swollen and bent due to carpal tunnel syndrome. *shudder*

(And no, I didn’t. She called me a chicken.)

So, after what seems to be an eternity the defrag finishes. I dump the IE cache and make some simple tweaks that should theoretically improve her browsing experience, then reboot.

System boots normally, albeit slowly. No blue screens. Good. Good.

I open IE and it opens normally. A hijack script takes control of IE and forces me to a search page. Yay.

So, I open the "button" I put on her desktop to take her directly to Pogo. It works. Joy!

Then the site doesn’t want to load anymore. *ERGH*

It’s about this time she starts talking about all the crazies that she meets up with in the chat room on Pogo. (They’re all gay you know).

Feeling like a rat on a sinking ship, I continue. I somehow manage to channel the ability to tune her out much like a parent does around a child constantly saying "Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad."

So. IE doesn’t want to work. Given system performance limitations, trying to reinstall it, repair it, or run SpyBot again don’t seem like good, fast alternatives. Given the situation, good, fast, and easy are all high on my list of priorities at the moment.

Given that IE is a lost cause, and that they have a DSL connection I download Firefox which has wonderful popup stopping capabilities and is reasonably spyware and adware resistant. I get it downloaded and installed. I can hit all sites other than Pogo. To test, I do ping tests on various websites, then try to ping Pogo. No response.

My job is done!

I tell her that I’ve got her computer up and running as good as it’s going to get, and that it’s now Pogo that’s having problems not her. I suggest she get in touch with them (The jackpot is up over $1300 you know!) and see if there’s anything they can suggest. Otherwise, she’ll need to wait it out.

She pays me and I go on my way.

Then I get another call last night. (@#$%&*@#@$#%)

"Still having problems. Cain’t get on Pogo. Gotta come over right away" she says.

I say "Sorry. I’ve got things (school and plans) that have me tied up for the next two nights. The earliest I can be there is Saturday morning."

Obviously she has evolved beyond my mere human form, as her seemingly enhanced senses and keen intellect managed to take that statement and perceive it in some Wile E. Coyote-esque way as "I’ll be right over."

I heard this and that and the jackpot is up over $1400 and "I need to get on there to play." The addiction in her voice was obvious, all-consuming, and scary. To quote the Fed-Ex Guy on TV, "You’re creepin’ me out man."

I told her warily if she still needed me to call me on Saturday and I’d come look at it. I also told her Wal-Mart had new computers for $600 and that I could ger her one if she wanted to consider that. That went over like a lead balloon. She again wanted me to come down and fix it (this is around 8PM too…) I stood my ground and told her Saturday. She all but hung up on me.

This morning there was the nastiest voice mail from her on my home phone. Basically I’m sposedly comin’ over on Saturday and fixin’ it and she ain’t payin’ me for it.

I don’t think so.

I think that the $50 she gave me Wednesday night is once again hers and our business is done. I told her that too in an e-mail (assuming she can rub two neurons together long enough to check it). First thing Saturday I’m dropping a check off and wiping my hands of the whole situation.

It sucks because I try to help people out, and I charge them next to nothing for what I do, then they do something like this. All because they are too damn ignorant and don’t want to take the time to understand that computers aren’t like other things. They don’t just work and not work. There’s degrees of working. Kind of like the old adage "There’s no winning an argument with a woman, there’s just degrees of losing." (No flames for that one please…)

So, she left me a voice mail this morning, I sent her the e-mail to cover my arse. I’m also cutting her a check for her $50 and advising her to put it towards a new computer. Never call me again.

#^!@$&@%&@&#!$

People and their drama.

Don’t force your drama on me. I’m just a simple guy trying to live out my life. Just because yours sucks don’t push it on me. (He says ironically in a rant which will probably push more drama on other people…)

I’m gonna have to just stop freelancing and go work for CompUSA or something part time.

Ugh. I hear the vocational school has welding classes for adults wanting to learn new trades.

---

Tonight I see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. (Part of my "plans" mentioned earlier.) It looks phenomenal. Giant walking robots, flying aces, 30’s art deco, noir flavor, mad scientists, and doomsday devices. Can’t wait.

Tomorrow… lunch with Dad at the Lone Star before the game.

I’m not usually a football fan, but it’s evolved into somewhat of a tradition that during the football season, Dad comes over to our place to watch Buckeye football. It’s a nice chance for all of us to be together as a family, and I get time to spend with him that I might not normally get to otherwise. It’s pretty cool.

---

The NHL has locked it’s players out, which is a bummer. I’m a pretty rabid hockey fan even though the Blue Jackets suck. (No flames please.) Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to go see a Spits game or two this year to make up for it. Let’s hope this labor disagreement ends soon and doesn’t result in the death of Hockey As We Know It. Since the Blue Jackets have come to town, I’ve managed to find a professional sport that I enjoy, and get excited about. It would suck to see the NHL crumble and Hockey As We Know It fade into apathy and obscurity. Some think that given the current climate regarding Hockey in North America, this labor dispute could cause the league to dissolve.

That would be a bad, bad thing.

Geek Watch 2004 Day One

With Cheryl out of town for the next two weeks, I took full advantage of my pay-per-view service last night and ordered up Hellboy. When released in theaters earlier this year, Tycho over at Penny Arcade called it pornography for nerds, and he was essentially right. Lots of glorious special effects and decent enough acting especially by Ron Perlman as Hellboy.

The plot involves the Nazis (harkening back to my Indiana Jones memories from my childhood) and a mad Russian monk opening a portal to the realm where the elder gods slept in an attempt to destroy the earth. (Don’t mad monks always want to do that?) His plans were foiled and the gate closed, but not before an infant Hellboy passed through to our realm. He was "adopted" by a paranormal investigator and raised as Hellboy. Fast forward sixty years and you have the same semi-immortal mad monk trying to finish up his sinister plans for destroying the Earth and manipulating Hellboy in the process.

It was mildly entertaining and kept me busy for a couple of hours. I’d probably buy the DVD given a chance.

Tonight I plan on finishing up Firefly. Maybe even playing some video games.

Man, I need to get out more.

Chaos

And now it’s time for a peek inside Chris’ head. Don’t mind the cobwebs.

Tomorrow morning we leave to take Cheryl and Emma to see her parents for two weeks. If all goes well, we’ll be on the road by 9AM and in Windsor by 3PM. I’ll be driving back on Sunday to spend two weeks alone. I’ll have plenty to do obviously, with the packing and all. I’ll have video games and movies to catch up on too.

---

Dad told me tonight that his cardiologist didn’t like the results of his latest EKG. He said something about the fact that there may be a minor blockage in one of his arteries. The doctor didn’t have enough evidence to draw a complete conclusion. I’ve known for a couple weeks that Dad had a stress test coming up, but I guess now I know the real reason why.

I’m pretty bummed. It was just over two years ago that he had a quadruple bypass done and I’m not eager to see my Dad laying in a cardiac ICU bed again anytime soon. It was really rough on me last time. I know it’s probably nothing major but I’m emotionally preparing myself for it anyway in case things go from semi-bad to emergency surgery.

God I love my family genetics and this obsessive-compulsive need to worry about things I have absolutely no control over. Thanks Mom.

---

If you’ve noticed that I’ve made a slight change to the site, then you’re right. I was bored today so I decided to add a little animation to some of the binary code that accents my site. It was done using Macromedia Flash, which may be obvious to some of you. It’s a nice little animation program that some folks use to create games and entire movies in. I’m not that experienced with it by a long shot, but I can create simple movies and preloader scripts. It’s not much, but it makes me happy.

---

School is back in session now. I’ve even turned in a couple of assignments already. This term it’s Project Management, and Information Systems Security. I’ve had some PM experience via training classes from my current employer and I wasn’t too thrilled with the subject matter. I gotta do what I gotta do to graduate though. I think info security is going to be a blast. I really enjoy learning about that kind of stuff. There’s nothing quite like learning how to properly secure a network and learning how to balance security, availability, and risk.

Seriously.

I know, I’m weird. You’ll get used to it. Cheryl did.

---

I think I only have three classes left to go after this one before I graduate. I need to talk to my student advisor before this term ends to make sure.

That would rock.

---

I think I need to buy groceries. Mustn’t forget the fabric softener either.

---

I have a dent in the door of my car, and a nick in the hood. Arr. It’s drivin’ me nuts.

---

My office is a mess. I need to clean it.

---

The closing is on the 30th of this month. I can’t wait to get out of here.

---

The next two weeks (and beyond) are going to be about simplifying. It’ll just be me, the walls, and the television. Sure I’ll miss my wife, but part of me longs for the good old days of solitude, peace, and quiet. I’m starting to understand more as I get older why some spouses elect to take vacations on their own.

Don’t get me wrong. Cheryl is far from being hard to live with. I think it’s more along the lines that we just both need a break from the hectic schedule that our lives have been the past year. Every day it’s been up at 6AM if not sooner. Rush around to get the kid to the sitter. Work all day. Rush to pick the kid up from the sitter. Get her home in time to bathe her, then spend the next two hours cleaning the house and prepping for the next day where you lather, rinse, repeat.

Enough of that crap. It’s time for a break.

---

Gimme a break… gimme a break… break me off a piece of that KIT KAT BAR.

---

And now we return you to your scheduled programming.

The Glories of G-Mail

Ahh G-Mail. That wonderful evolution of e-mail by Google that lets you have a gigabyte of online storage, wonderfully well-done spam filters, and oodles of other well thought out features. Access your G-Mail anywhere you have web access, just like Hotmail, only worlds better. G-mail is what Hotmail used to be, only corn fed and not annoying. Hotmail used to be halfway functional before Microsoft/MSN bought them out and corrupted it into some other form of spam delivery mechanism. Oh well.

One of my buddies hooked me up with an invite to the G-Mail Beta about three weeks ago. G-Mail invites were things to be treasured, much like the golden ticket Charlie found in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Now it seems they are a dime a dozen. Ah well, it was good while it lasted. Regardless, I took full advantage of it. After a while I got invitations of my own that I used to set up e-mail addresses for Cheryl and Emma. All this roundabout blathering gets me to this point: all of my and my family’s e-mail addresses have changed. So. Here they are if you would like to update your address books.

Me (Chris) – adams.christopher@gmail.com
Cheryl – cheryl.adams@gmail.com
Emma – adams.emma@gmail.com
General e-mail for this site – geek.interrupted@gmail.com

This is effective immediately as I no longer regularly check my Hotmail account, and soon our Adelphia e-mail will no longer be functional.

Also, if any of you want your own G-Mail account, send me an e-mail and I will add you to a waiting list for when I get another set of invitations.

Thanks!
Chris

Get Your Geek On

Our little village had another community yard sale today. Given the fact that we are in contract on our house and close on the 30th of this month, we decided to do a little ah… purging. We managed to offload some particularly large, cumbersome, and not to mention heavy pieces of furniture to some perfectly willing customers and made a tidy profit at the same time. Our yard sale at the beginning of the summer netted us around three hundred dollars. Today’s yard sale netted about two hundred. Not too shabby. To celebrate we had pizza for lunch, and then went to Tim Horton’s tonight.

We managed to get rid of a lot of little items and crap that has just been sitting and collecting dust. I offloaded a dresser and a bookshelf as well as several yard implements I won’t be needing anymore since Dad already has all that stuff. I managed to get rid of a bunch of semi-collectible action figures, hot wheels, matchbox cars, and other such geek paraphernalia that has only been moldering in a rubbermaid container for the last seven years. We adopted a somewhat HGTV approach to things. Anything we aren’t currently using is clutter. Trash what won’t sell, sell what will, and keep only what we use on a day to day basis. This philosophy suited us pretty well, and gave our yard sale a bit better items than the others at reasonable prices.

I even offloaded a Star Trek Tridimensional Chess Set. I am geek, hear me whine.

Anywho.

We wound up cleaning out our closets and taking about six bags of clothes to the Goodwill drop off. I even managed to clean up the closet in the spare room to somewhat acceptable standards. Pre- yard sale it was a pit that swallowed up more than one brave adventurer.

All of this leaves us with a little bit more money, a lot more space, and a lot less crap to move when we get out of here. To quote Martha, “It’s a good thing.”

---

I’ve been getting some e-mails asking about updates on the process of selling the house. Basically we have reached a purchase agreement with the buyers and we sign our closing paperwork on the 30th of this month. We’ve been doing little things around the house to fix certain items like the drain in Cheryl’s shower and to replace the shower nozzle in my bathroom. We had the appraisal late last week so the bank knows that the house really is worth the amount of the mortgage.

The sale is basically all but final now. The only thing we have left to do is sign the papers, then move out by October 24th. So, by Halloween we should be at my Father’s house and Cheryl will be home full time with Emma.

Stress level… falling.

Cheryl and I are anxiously awaiting the 30th of this month. We can’t wait to sign the papers and get on with the next stage of our lives. All Cheryl talks about is going to Max & Erma’s afterwards to celebrate. Times have been lean as of late with Cheryl working part time, so going out to eat isn’t exactly high on our weekly list of priorities. I’ve heard more than once in the past couple weeks that we are going to enjoy our Laredo Steaks sans baby on that day. Those of you who are parents will understand the simple pleasure of dinner out with the spouse without the tricycle motor(s) tagging along.

---

Next weekend Cheryl will be taking Emma back to Canada so they can visit with her family for two weeks. This has been part of the plan all along as Cheryl’s family only gets to see Emma maybe once every other month. So, a two week sabbatical is on the menu. Since I’m tapped out as far as vacation goes, I’m going to be staying here for a couple weeks.

Can you say “bachelor living?” I knew you could.

It’s going to be two weeks of pizza, wings, stupid movie nights, video games, and other assorted and arcane geekisms. Yes, that’s right, Hoji is getting his Geek on. It’s gonna be a long ride on a short bus baby. I can’t wait. I’ve got the Fearless Hyena volumes 1 and 2 just ready and raring to go in the VCR. Yeah, that’s right. We’re doing a little retro crappy kung-fu action old school style. They don’t even make these cow patties on DVD I don’t think.

No, they don’t. I just checked Amazon.

After the Fearless Hyena, I think I might toss in a little Fist of the North Star, or catch up on the Firefly DVDs that my buddy Keith loaned me.

Oh yeah. Game on baby. Game on.

They’ll give a stamp to anybody these days.

Given that I am a proud father, I have every right to take advantage of cute photos of my daughter. I took this particular masterpiece and uploaded it to the PhotoStamps website and customized a pretty pink stamp just for my daughter. We had planned on using them for birthday party invites but our finances fell through at the last minute and it didn’t work out. So, these will probably start showing up randomly in your mailboxes sometime soon. Maybe when we get around to getting new portraits done of her. Regardless, enjoy this little gem until I can get more photos up someday in the future.

Duh da da duh duh da duh da duh da duhh duhhhh

President Bush is in town today, speaking at Nationwide Arena. In honor of this auspicious event, I get a free half a day of vacation because of all the various street closures and such. Am I going to use this half day of vacation to go see the leader of our nation (and the free world) speak?

Heck no, I’m getting my wife and getting the heck out of Dodge before something weird happens.

Given that he is coming to town, I have been mulling over in my mind reasons to vote either for him or against him. I’m not going to launch into some political diatribe over this guy, nor am I going to blather on about how John Kerry is the savior of our democracy. I guess the issues that are closest to my heart this year are the outsourcing of jobs overseas (given that I am an IT worker) and the fact that my civil liberties are slowly eroding away given the current and seemingly ineffectual war on terror.

But hey, what do I know? I just answer phones for a living and show stupid people how to make Windows do what it should, not what it’s designed not to do. “No sir, you cannot alphabetize your files into neat little folders. Windows doesn’t know where to find them. Yes sir, you’ll just have to trust that Windows is doing the right things with them.”

If anything, I’m going to vote for John Kerry because he seems (I naively say in my back-hills Ohio convictions) to be running a clean campaign and not running the same fear and doubt campaign ads that Bush runs. That, and he actually has the stones to not screen his audiences before he speaks. Granted, Bush is the President and has to have some level of security when he speaks, but I think that asking people to sign a loyalty agreement is going a bit over the line.

But hey. What do I know? I just work for a living.